Despite meticulous time management and delegation as a doctor, there were times when I found cobwebs on the laundry left on the clothesline too long, or a moldy school lunch or squashed banana forgotten at the bottom of a school bag at home. I would ensure all the important school dates were in my diary, but I was often tripped up by the curriculum day when school was suddenly off without time to organize childcare.
On one such occasion, a prominent psychiatrist and his wife, also a psychiatrist, happened to be staying at my home and kindly offered to look after my young adolescent sons. I was riddled with guilt when I later heard that my children had disappeared to our shed for the day. When I asked them if anything was wrong, I laughed with relief at their dismissive response: “We were just scared they would diagnose us.”
Now that my sons are impossibly well-adjusted adults, I can reflect on what worked for me as a working parent. Some of the most powerful parenting lessons came from my young patients, who told me things like:
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